


encephalon

by skuls



Series: X Files Rewatch Series [25]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode: s07e17 All Things, Episode: s07e18 Brand X, Episode: s07e19 Hollywood A.D., Episode: s07e21 Je Souhaite, Episode: s07e22 Requiem (X-Files), F/M, but in a way that makes sense with the show, mulder's brain disease thingy, references to en ami
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-04-25
Packaged: 2019-04-27 14:17:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14427216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skuls/pseuds/skuls
Summary: AU where Mulder tells Scully that he is dying in season 7 and the situation is dealt with accordingly.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> so this story came about from me realizing that the brain disease exists all over again (i forget on occasion) and wanting to try and canonically confront it. in doing so, i realized that s7 doesn’t really work with a brain disease, but oh well. i wanted to write some version of something where mulder actually tells scully, because i haven’t seen a lot of fics like that. i feel like the brain disease, while remaining a stupid, nonsensical plotline, had potential in the same way that the cancer arc did, and i felt like i should explore that a little.
> 
> i based this fic off of this subjective timeline i made: https://how-i-met-your-mulder.tumblr.com/post/172855506528/how-i-met-your-mulder-subjective-timeline-of. (i’ll note up front that there are mistakes, but i mean, it’s no more than the show itself.) this assumes that en ami and all things both take place after chimera, connecting the tension at the end of en ami to the awkwardness/distance at the beginning of all things. the timeline for this fic (mulder finding out how serious his brain thing is after en ami) is more or less my headcanon. the change here is that he tells scully.
> 
> disclaimer up front: there are very likely horrible, horrible inaccuracies throughout here. since the show never actually told us what mulder’s brain disease was, and considering how it came about, i didn’t want to make something up and pick a random disease. so instead i was vague as possible. i apologize for the inaccuracies in advance.

Later, Mulder will look back on the moment he found out with a degree of dry disbelief. He probably should have seen it coming; it seems impossible to be dying without knowing it.

He has been going to the doctor since November, a follow up to his spontaneous brain surgery, but he doesn't think anything of it. Doesn't find out how serious it is until it's too late. Until they call him while he's searching for Scully, when she's gone with the fucking smoker, and tell him that he only has a few months left. Maybe a year. 

Mulder hadn't mentioned the monthly doctor appointments to Scully because he hadn't seen the point. He hasn't thought it was a big deal. Just routine check-ups after he'd endured a lot of trauma to the brain. Apparently, they hadn't seen it either because they hadn't known what they were looking for. Hadn't seen until just now the decline, the fact that his brain was failing on him.

He doesn't regard it as much at first because he feels  _ fine _ . Fine. Has felt fine since last summer. The headaches went away, he hasn't felt dizzy or had any hallucinatory dreams. No mind reading, either. It must be a mistake, and he's too worried about Scully to think straight, so he forgets about it all until he knows she's safe. And then he's too furious to consider it, to mention it to Scully. How can he tell her now, after what they've both been through? After she left without a word with the fucking  _ smoker _ ? She could've been killed and he wouldn't have known or been able to save her. After everything they've been through, he can't believe she'd put him through this. 

Scully herself is equally furious at him for his fury. There is space between them for nearly two weeks, space he'd call unusual after the past six months: no staying over at each other's apartment, no late night phone calls, and definitely no interaction outside of work. They're not hostile to each other—whatever happens, he never wants that—but that doesn't equate friendliness. And during this time is when he goes to the doctor to get answers about that hectic phone call the week before.

The appointment makes it clear: he is dying. No mistake. He is definitely dying.

Mulder feels shell-shocked when it is confirmed. Like he's been gutted. Like he's looking at it all but is unable to hear a thing. He vaguely wonders if this is how Scully felt when she learned she was dying. He doesn't want to die.

First his sister, then his mother, and now him? Are the Mulders fated to all die off, one by one? He's missed his mother tremendously in the past few months, his mother and his sister, but he never thought he'd be… He's been  _ happy  _ lately, outside of losing her. Happier than he has been in years. Like a weight lifted off of his shoulders. And Scully… even if things are tense right now, he's hoped they won't stay that way. He's in love with her, hopelessly, and he'd hoped he wouldn't have to leave her any time soon. He'd thought they could have some sort of future together. To tell the truth, he's always been more scared of losing her than the other way around. 

He has no idea how he's going to tell her, what with everything that has happened now. Has no idea how he can ask for her help. He doesn't want to die.

\---

The tension falls away, gradually, and he knows it's mostly due to him. The fact that Scully trusted the smoker and ran off without a word seems trivial now, because all he can hear when he looks at her is  _ a few months, maybe a year. _ All the time they have left. The two of them, they're always living on borrowed time, and he doesn't know how to tell her now because he doesn't want to sound like he's begging for pity.  _ Please forgive me, Scully, I'm dying.  _ He won't do that. And he can't be mad at her when he has such little time left with her. So instead he backs off, stops being tense and hostile and just lets her be. And the tension starts to dissipate. 

The tension starts to dissipate, slowly, but not completely, which is why he finds himself headed to England alone nearly three weeks after Scully's return. He's not surprised; the allure of crop circles does not exactly appeal to her and he wasn't sure she'd want to go, but he decides to go anyway, without her. Changing his mind would probably make her suspicious and he's not ready to have that conversation yet.

(He'd told himself the night after he found out, sitting on the couch and watching TV without registering any of it, that he was not going to let this ruin his life. That he was going to keep living. Scully hadn't let her cancer beat her, and he wasn't going to let this beat him. He'd hold on for as long as he could, and hope for some sort of miracle. They always cheated fate somehow. But whatever happened, he isn't going to stop working. He wants to keep his normal life, and the files are too important.)

There's nothing in England. Nothing but cold and rain. He misses her.

Something seems to have shifted with Scully when he returns and accidentally runs into her. The tension is gone, replaced only by eagerness. When they get to his apartment, she kisses him in the doorway, her hand wrapped around his jacket, her other hand knocking his hat off playfully. It's the first time they've kissed since before she left, and he is so relieved he could cry. He kisses her gratefully, almost happily.

He has to tell her. He doesn't want to ruin this, but he has to tell her.

She tells him about fate and choices and a man she'd had an affair with who claimed to live for her. (He isn't jealous, not really, but a bit of annoyance does pop up at that part—if anyone has or will live for her, it's him. Not some selfish man like the one Scully describes.) She indicates that she thinks she has made the right one before falling asleep on his shoulder. He tucks hair behind her ear, covers her with a blanket. Watches her doze sweetly with sadness choking his throat. If all the choices led her here, he thinks, than it is a cruel world.

He has to tell her. There's no other option. He leans forward, kissing her temple gently, before standing and padding towards the bedroom. He'll tell her in the morning. Or if she wakes up tonight. He hates to break the news, but he can't go on like this. Can't keep deceiving her. It'll hurt like hell, but she needs to know. She has to know.

He climbs into bed, leaning against the headboard. He stares into the mirrors above the bed, trying to come up with the words. His reflection offers nothing, starting back at him with a twisted, conflicted expression, and the sight of it makes him miserable. He screws his eyes shut, rocking his head back against the pillows and tries not to think. He is dying. He is slowly dying. He is going to die. He swallows thickly and turns his mind to crop circles. 

He has no idea how much time passes between his entrance and Scully's, but he looks down, opening his eyes when he hears her stockinged feet padding the ground. “Hey,” she says, her voice sweet with sleep. She's smiling at him in the way that makes him want to cross the world for her. “Where'd you go?” she asks, tugging at the hem of her sweater.

“Thought I'd let you sleep,” he says. His hands are sweaty and clammy; he swallows hard, gathering his nerve. He can't do this, he can't do it. He doesn't know how to tell her.

“Mmm.” She crawls into his lap, her hand brushing his jaw. She leans up and kisses him; he wraps his arms around her, unable to help himself, and she shifts, her sweater riding up under his hands. “Missed you,” she says against his mouth, her hands pulling at the hem of his sweater. 

And that is all it takes. He pulls away, removing his hands from her sides, says, “Scully, I have to tell you something,” in a guilt-soaked serious tone that is unmistakable.

Surprised, but not overly full of concern, she crawls off of him and onto the mattress, settling on her knees. “What is it?” she asks, her knuckles brushing over the side of his face. 

He breathes shakily, wipes his hands on the blanket and lays them in his lap. He won't touch her until he knows she wants him to. “Scully, ever since my… brain surgery last year, I've been going to the doctor monthly for routine check-ups,” he says, and her face shifts stonily. “Observations and scans, you know… And last month when I went in, they found something.”

Her breath catches in her throat, and he knows where her mind has gone. With them,  _ they found something _ can never mean anything good. Her fingers brush his cheek in a desperate little motion.

Mulder takes another deep breath before continuing. “They… they found signs of decline,” he says. Her other hand fumbles to press against his chest, her eyes wide as she looks up at him. Mulder swallows back the lump in his throat, reaching up to brush hair out of her face gently. “They estimated that I have a few months left,” he adds tremulously, cupping the side of her face. As if that could soften the blow any; the words hurt spilling out of his own mouth. “Maybe a year if I'm lucky.”

Her hand presses hard into his chest, the spot over his heart. “You're dying?” she whispers. And he can't watch this, the expression on her face, contorting into sadness; he looks down at his lap, nodding. 

Her hand brushes the side of his face, lifting his chin to look him in the eye. “How long have you know?” she asks, stern and sad, her voice trembling.

He swallows back tears, strokes her hair with his thumb. “A few weeks. I found out while you were with the smoker, and I… I didn't know how to tell you.” He gulps, blinks hard so he doesn't cry. “I'm sorry, Scully. I'm so sorry.”

She shakes her head hard, looking away. 

“I'm so sorry.” He leans forward and kisses her forehead, smoothing back her hair again and again with cold, trembling hands. “I'm sorry, Scully.”

“No.” She shakes her head again, pulling back so that she isn't touching him, so he isn't touching her. “It's not supposed to… why wouldn't you tell me sooner? Mulder, why wouldn't you tell me?”

“Scully,” he tries, helplessly. 

“I could've helped you if you'd told me sooner, Mulder,” she chokes out. Her head is bowed, but he can hear that she is crying. She grabs a fistful of his shirt as if on instinct. “I'm your…” She trails off. As if she doesn't know what to say. She tugs at his shirt hard.

He's crying now, too. “I'm sorry,” he says, “I'm sorry, I didn't think…” 

She lifts her chin and kisses him fiercely, drawing closer on the bed, a warm tangle of arms and legs against him. He pulls her against him, wrapping himself around her. Her mouth takes like salt, like an ocean. She kisses him like she's trying to devour him whole, grips him like he's going to evaporate out of her arms.

Her hands are tugging at his sweater again; she mumbles, “Okay?” into his mouth and he nods. She pulls his sweater over his head. 

\---

In the morning, he wakes up alone, cold and naked in his bed. Scully's things gone from the living room, Scully gone from where she fell asleep wrapped around him like an anaconda.

Mulder sits up in bed, some hollow feeling inside him that is only growing. He's alone. She left. Maybe she needs time to process, or maybe she just needs distance, but she still left. Maybe he should've told her sooner, taken her to the doctor with him from the beginning, not kept her in the dark. Whatever she decides to do now, whether it's to walk away or to end any romantic relationship between them, he deserves it. He is an asshole and a fucking idiot.

He goes into the office a few hours later and finds Scully there, talking sharply into the phone, motioning wildly with her hands. “Well,  _ make _ it a priority!” she snaps, waving her left hand so fast that she nearly knocks his desk lamp over. “This is my  _ partner _ we're talking about. We start right away. As soon as physically possible.”

Mulder stands awkwardly in the doorway, his hand clenched around the frame. After everything that went down between them over the past few weeks, he didn't really expect this. (Although maybe he should've expected it by the hard, desperate way she held onto him last night.) “Scully?” he asks tentatively. 

She looks up at him and her face softens, just a little. “Yes,” she says tensely into the phone. “All right. Thank you, Isabel. Call me when you know.” She sets the phone down with a clunk and stands, wiping her hands on her skirt. 

“Scully?” he asks again. 

“Sorry I left this morning, Mulder,” Scully says gently, sincerely, “but I remembered a friend from med school and I thought I could call in a favor.” She rounds the desk to cross the room, back stiff and straight. “She's a neurologist, the best in the business. I got ahold of your medical records to see what was wrong, and they were confusing, but I think I might have found the problem. I sent them over to Isabel…” 

“Scully,” he tries. 

She takes his hand and pulls him into the office, closing the door behind him. “We have an appointment tomorrow,” she says, turning and tugging him towards the desk. “And I've been doing some research, and I have some ideas for treatment… maybe surgery if it's completely necessary. I don't like the idea considering what you went through last summer, but like I said, Isabel's the best…” 

“Dana,” he says. She freezes, shoulders tense as she faces away from him. He squeezes her hand. “You don't have to do this,” he whispers.

She turns, her face steely. “Yes, I do,” she says, deadly serious. “I do. There's no other option. This is it.” She pulls his hand to her, holds it against her ribs. “I'm not letting this happen to you, Mulder,” she says, and the only sign of vulnerability in her voice. “I won't. Not if it can be prevented.”

He's tempted to crack a joke about the past few days must have really shaken her up to make her react this way, to disregard medical evidence in favor of some miraculous prevention that echoes her own recovery, but he doesn't because he can feel her heart behind her ribs, pounding horribly hard, and he remembers what it was like to watch her die. And underneath it all, he really doesn't want to die. He wants to be strong for her, but he really, really doesn't want to die. 

He nods, leans closer to pull her into his arms. She sniffles a little into his chest, wrapping her arms around his neck. “Thank you,” he mumbles, kissing the top of her head. She nods, lifting her chin to kiss his cheek. He rocks her back and forth, quivering in her grip as they cling to each other.

\---

Scully more or less takes up residence in his apartment. Which consists of showing up that night with a bag with several changes of clothes. “Just in case I'm over here a lot,” she says by way of explanation, looking awkwardly at the ground. 

Part of him is tempted to argue, point out that he has been perfectly fine with absolutely no symptoms, but the part of him that remembers Scully's cancer shuts him up. He would've moved into her apartment in a second if she had offered. And besides that, he doesn't see any reason to argue if Scully wants to spend 90% of her time in his apartment. If all of a sudden there are bottles of her shampoo in his shower and a bag of her clothes beside his closet, he doesn't care at all. He welcomes her company, more than welcomes it. The small part of him that argues for the remainder of his dignity is quickly squashed. 

Scully's neurologist friend seems skeptical of her ability to save him, but she has some ideas that they can try, various experimental things. Scully stands directly at his side, talking to her in a surprisingly tense voice the entire time. He wouldn't think that the two were friends if Scully hadn't told him so. They discuss treatment options for the next few months. The friend, Isabel something, promises to do everything she can. “But I can't make any promises, Dana,” she says, taking Scully's hand comfortingly. “To either of you.”

Mulder understands, nods. Scully clenches her jaw and doesn't answer. He knows that if the positions were reversed, he would be the one who refuses to believe it. Their positions switch so fast when it's the other in danger. 

They collapse onto the couch when they get home. Mulder is unexpectedly exhausted, worn-out and drawn; he wants to sleep for a week. He curls into the corner of the couch, lazily watching the TV. Scully holes up in the other corner, his laptop in her lap, the light reflecting off of her glasses. She's tapping furiously, brow furrowed, staring irritably at the screen. Mulder waits almost an hour before stopping her, reaching out and stroking the top of her bare foot. “Scully,” he says softly. 

“I'm almost done, Mulder,” she says irritably. “I'm researching on some similar results to what we found in your scans, I think I might have…” 

“Scully,” he says again, tugging at her foot gently. Her toes are freezing, curling into his fingers. “C’mere. This can wait til tomorrow.”

Her brow furrows again as she considers, reconsiders. And then she's snapping the laptop shut, crawling across the couch and leaning into his side. He wraps an arm around her, grateful for her warmth against his. 

“I'm going to find it,” she says, leaning her face into the side of his chest. “I will figure out how to save you.”

“I know,” he says, and he doesn't know, but if he believes in anything, he believes in her. 

Scully threads an arm around his waist, snuggling against him. They watch the TV quietly, and if a lump rises up in his throat when the husband on the TV dies, if they sniffle a little and pretend that they don't hear the other, well, then that's pretty normal for the both of them.

Mulders head hurts, dully, but that's not completely out of the ordinary after a long day. He ignores it.

\---

They return to normal life as much as possible, and except for the fact that Scully is practically living with him and spending half of her time buried in research about brain diseases, life pretty much is normal. Aside from an increased tiredness and the occasional headache, Mulder is fine. No symptoms, no nose bleeds, no sickness at all. He feels almost guilty for the lack of pain on his end; after everything Scully went through, and she worked the entire time without complaint. It doesn't seem fair that he should die so peacefully.

Even though he shows little to no symptoms, Scully is still protective, mostly insisting against avoiding the field. And he doesn't have the heart to argue with her, not after everything they've been through. He manages to do research on cryptids from the office, arrange a few meetings with cryptozoologists. Assists Scully in her research as best she can. If she's working desperately to save his life, than the least he can do is assist her. They spend a week and a half in the office until Skinner needs their assistance on a case in North Carolina.

He calls Mulder in the middle of the night, and it takes several minutes for him to wake, his head lolled against Scully's thigh as she touches the side of his face, trying to wake him up. “Mulder,” she whispers. “Skinner's calling. Second time. I think it's urgent.”

Mulder blinks blearily, sitting up in bed and grasping for his call phone. His head is pounding. Thank God Scully didn't answer instinctively; Skinner seemed pretty suspicious when he came over last spring and Scully answered the door. “Sir?” he mumbles, rubbing at his eyes. “What is it?”

It  _ is _ a particularly urgent case, apparently, and with a lot of pressure coming down on Skinner from up above. A hit by a tobacco company in North Carolina. He wants their help. He wants them down to Winston Salem right away. 

Mulder agrees, wiping the sleep from his eyes, and hangs up, crawling out of bed.  _ Right away _ means go get a flight now and hopefully be there by morning. “You know what the song says, right, Scully?” he mutters, smoothing his rumpled hair. “Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina in the morning, right? The literal morning in our case.” 

“Mulder, I don't know,” says Scully. She's sitting on the edge of the bed, watching him rummage for clothes in his dresser. “It feels too soon for you.” 

Mulder rubs at his temples, finds a bottle of aspirin and pops two. “I'm fine, Scully, really,” he says. “I've felt just fine for months now, perfectly capable of field work. Besides, are you really going to disobey a direct order?”

The purse of her lips tells him no, but she mutters, “Skinner would understand,” in a fierce voice as she crosses the room to move clothes from her big suitcase to her small bag. Mulder leans down and kisses the top of her head gently.

\---

The case turns out to be a bad idea, but not the type of bad idea Scully anticipated. Not at all.

Exposure to secondhand smoke with tobacco beetles somehow embedded inside leaves him breathless in the hospital, bugs burrowing into his lungs. He's coughing up blood and bugs, and the horror in Scully's eyes speak volumes. She drives him to the hospital, gripping his hand like a vice. When they get to the emergency room, he is bent nearly in half, coughing so violently that he's almost shaking. Blood splatters his collar, beetles pushing past his lips. His vision spins and he feels Scully's cool hand on his forehead, on his rattly chest, hears her trembling voice tell him, “You're going to be okay,” just before it all goes black.

He drifts in and out of consciousness: out of it on the impeccably clean emergency room floor, back into it in a hospital bed with pain erupting in his throat and chest and lungs. They've operated on him, apparently. Scully holds his hand in both of hers. He can barely talk, a raspy whisper, and before he knows it, he can barely breathe. There's an O2 mask suddenly over his mouth as he struggles for air, and Scully's horrified face hovering over him. He thinks he can feel himself coughing up more bigs and wants to shudder with horror. 

_ After everything,  _ he wants to say,  _ after whatever the hell is causing my brain to fall apart, it would be ironic as hell if I died this way, this fucking horror show way.  _ He falls back under with a multitude of hands on him—the doctors and nurses, working to keep him alive, but he can only feel Scully's.

\---

In and out of consciousness. Pain throughout his entire body. He's barely aware of anything in these fleeting moments of lucidness, but he can usually hear Scully shouting orders. At one point, he feels her hand in his hair, stroking it back. Telling him he's going to be okay again and again, promising him. 

When he wakes up for longer than a few foggy minutes at a time, he finds Scully at his bedside, half asleep as she hunches over the mattress. He opens his mouth to tell her to go home, but all that comes out is a high, pathetic squeaking sound. His throat grates like sandpaper. He is so thirsty. 

Scully hears him, though. She looks up from where she was staring at the sheet, and her face softens, relieved. “Mulder,” she whispers, engulfing his hand in hers. “How do you feel?”

He can't talk—he can practically feel the friction of his vocal cords rubbing together—so he settles for mouthing,  _ Bad.  _

“I know.” Scully ducks her head briefly and brushes her lips over his knuckles. “It looks like you're going to be fine, though,” she whispers, and the  _ for now _ that he knows she's leaving out hurts him as much as he knows it hurts her. “We got all of the bugs and larvae out of your system once I figured out that nicotine was a pesticide. I don't know if you remember that. You've been out for a few days. Right now, they're monitoring the damage to your respiratory system, but it looks like it's healing slowly but surely.” She kisses his knuckles again, full of relief. 

Mulder swallows painfully and closes his eyes, thinking,  _ Thank god.  _ Aside from tobacco beetles nesting in one's lungs being a horrifying and horribly embarrassing way to go, he’d thought that they had a few months left. Expected it. He's going to hold onto these remaining months with everything in him. He's going to enjoy every minute he has left with Scully.

As if reading his mind, Scully adds, “I had them run a quick scan once I informed them of your condition. It looks like you've… deteriorated a bit, but not so much that we should be worried.” She's speaking muffedly into his fingers, her voice breaking. “Unfortunately, this means we shouldn't start a treatment for you until your immune system calms down a little bit.” 

Mulder opens his eyes, nudges her cheek with his thumb to get her attention. When their eyes meet, he mouths, slowly and purposefully,  _ It's going to be okay.  _

Scully gulps, nods and closes her eyes. But she doesn't let go of his hand. A tear hits the space between his fingers and trails down his palm to his wrist. She's sitting close enough that he can lean close to her and he does, kissing the inside of her elbow. She reaches up with one hand and strokes his hair. 

He's home within the week. They spend another week in his apartment as he recovers, as his throat and lung tissue heals and he is able to talk again. Lucky for him, Scully is good at silent communication.

\---

The month of July is long and hot, and he's not going to argue if their best option is to spend it in his bedroom with the air turned down, lying on top of the covers. His voice comes back slowly, rasping words into Scully's hair. She’s been withdrawn lately, overly quiet. She's worried. She doesn't like the fact that they haven't been able to begin a treatment yet. They work a few simple cases—all local, none dangerous—and she keeps sleeping in his bed, sprawled lazily like a cat in the center and taking up more than her fair share of space. Mulder doesn't mind, but he does feel bad for her. He didn't want to uproot her life like this. “Hey, Scully,” he begins one night, lying with her on the mattress with the air conditioning blowing on them. They're watching the TV they'd lugged into the bedroom while he was recovering, flat on their backs and not looking at each other. He covers her hand with his and offers, “We could always sleep over at your place, you know. Once in a while. We don't always have to stay here.”

She doesn't answer right away, and he wonders if he has hurt her feelings. “I want you to be comfortable,” she says finally. 

“I'm comfortable anyway, Scully.” He flips onto his stomach, brushing his knuckles over her cheek. She clenches her jaw a little, eyes still on the TV. “Really, I feel fine,” he says, softer this time. Some minor headaches are nothing compared to this beetle shit. “Aside from some leftover tobacco-beetle-induced pain, I'm fine. I don't want to keep you from your home.”

Scully makes a disapproving sound, her eyes shifting from the TV to the mirrors he swears he has to get taken out sometime soon. (He would have sooner, except that a part of him doesn't want to disturb something that appeared out of nowhere. That's most of the reason he kept the damn water bed. And he always figured that if they semi-moved in together, they'd move to Scully's place instead of his.) “If the situation were reversed,” she mumbles thickly, “you wouldn't take  _ I'm fine _ for an answer.”

He flops back on the mattress beside her, defeated. She's right, he wouldn't. He'd never leave her side if the cancer made a disappearance. He nestles his chin against Scully's shoulder and says nothing. Scully, also silent, reaches down to take his hand, as if to reassure him of no hard feelings. They watch his tiny fucking TV together.

Scully disappears for a few hours that evening, and reappears with takeout and fresh clothes, smelling like the brand of shampoo she didn't bring with her. He has an appointment tomorrow, she informs him, arms crossed over her chest. And then maybe they can start on that case in Iowa, if he's feeling up to it. 

“I just don't want to uproot your life, Scully,” he says, trying his best not to sound like he's trying to get rid of her. (Because he isn't. He really isn't. He just doesn't want her to leave everything behind for him when he likely won't make it through the next year. He can't do that to her. Despite everything, she still has a life.)

“You're not,” Scully says firmly. “Mulder, what else would I be doing?”

He doesn't the answer to that, so he says nothing.

They take the case in Iowa. Scully's friend Isabel begins a treatment plan with him that hopefully will not disrupt their day-to-day life, and Scully eats lunch with her mother on the weekends. They try their hands at normalcy: grocery shopping after work (where the list doesn't consist of frozen meals or takeout menus), negotiating laundry shifts (because the laundry machines in Mulder’s building are shitty, frankly, and he has a theory that a demon lives in the dryer), taking turns feeding the fish. Scully reminds him to take his medication and Mulder drags her away from her computer when she stays up past midnight working. If Skinner knows about their cohabitating situation (evidence: he only ever calls Mulder after hours and instructs him to “inform Agent Scully”), he doesn't say a word. Maybe he knows the reason for it. 

\---

The release of  _ The Lazarus Bowl,  _ that shitty movie Wayne Federman was making that Mulder had nearly forgotten about, sends the two of them to Hollywood along with Skinner. (He actually calls them to his office to tell them that they're invited to the premiere, holding up the tickets awkwardly.) 

Scully doesn't want to go, and it actually has nothing to do with the disease slowly eating away at Mulder's brain. (His latest scans showed no further deterioration, but no signs of improvement, either.) Instead, it has everything to do with her overall embarrassment over the fact that the movie exists in the first place. “Couldn't we just go to a theater in Virginia?” she protests in the safety of their office. “Hollywood seems a bit extravagant for something like this.” Her irritation with the movie had been spurned after twenty minutes of running in heels, and only grew after Federman sent reporters sniffing around. 

“Come on, Scully,” Mulder says, raising his eyebrows suggestively. “I seem to remember you enjoying Hollywood last time.” 

She wrinkles her nose up at him from where she's collapsed in the desk chair. “I liked Los Angeles,” she says seriously. “I don't like ridiculous movies that over-exaggerate and misconceptualize our jobs. At least that COPS episode showed what we really do.”

Mulder taps his chin dramatically, pretending to be in deep thought. “I seem to remember a certain Jose Chung and his horribly inaccurate portrayal of a certain case,” he says coyly. 

She makes a face at him. “At least the names were changed,” she retorts.

He makes a face right back. “C’mon, Scully,” he says, leaning down to kiss the top of her head. “We could use a vacation. We only have to spend one night at the movies, you know. We could take a couple more days off, see what trouble we could get into.” 

Her hands tug at his jacket, tugging him closer. “There wouldn't be some monster down in LA you want to investigate, would there?” she mumbles into his mouth. 

He kisses her firmly. “Absolutely not. Well. Not really.” (There's a sea monster he's been meaning to look into for years, but they don't need to spend their vacation on that.)

“Hmm,” she hums, leans up to kiss him again, but he yanks away suddenly as a sudden pain shoots through his skull. “Ow, shit,” he says, blinking hard as the white-hot pain comes over him. Not dull, the way the pain has usually been, but sharp, as if someone has inserted a spike between his eye sockets. Dots dance over his vision. He rubs at his forehead, standing up and stepping back. He blinks hard as the pain fades away to a dull ache.

“Mulder? What is it?” Scully's on her feet in a second, her hand flying to his shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he hisses, blinking hard. “Fine. Just a headache.”

Her hand moves from his shoulder to his temple, fingers fluttering over his forehead. “A headache?” she says softly, her eyes wide and worried. 

He understands her meaning and shakes his head. “It's okay, Scully,” he says softly. “I get headaches all the time, it's nothing.”

“You don't know that,” she says firmly. Her eyes are full of fear. “Mulder, maybe we shouldn't…”

He shakes his head, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “Scully. It's fine, really. Just a few days. We need this.”

Scully bites her lower lip, her hand still against his forehead like he has a fever. He lets go of her, turning and opening the desk drawer in search of ibuprofen. “Scully, you didn't put your life on hold when you were sick,” he says softly. “I don't want to put mine on hold either.”

“Okay,” Scully replies, just as softly. Her hand brushes over the small of his back as she steps away. 

He dry-swallows two ibuprofrens and turns, comes up behind Scully where she's poking in the file cabinets and wraps his arms around her. She stiffens but doesn't pull away, leaning into him. “Hollywood?” he says sheepishly into her hair. 

She turns in his arms and hugs him tightly, so tight that he gasps a little at the sudden loss of air. “This movie is going to be horrifyingly bad, Mulder,” she says muffedly into his chest. It sounds like she isn't far off from tears. 

He feels like he isn't far off from crying himself. “I won't say you didn't warn me,” he mumbles.

\---

He doesn't say she didn't warn him. But he didn't expect it to be nearly  _ this  _ bad.

He doesn't make it through the whole damn movie. He storms out after the coffin scene. Scully tracks him down somewhere on the set, sits beside him overlooking the fake cemetery, and they discuss remembrance and movies and the dead. Mulder tries to make him take it all seriously, questioning things like how they be remembered because of the movie, noting that the dead are everywhere. Reminding himself silently that there is a good chance that he will be in a place not unlike this sooner than later (except for the fact that it will be real and not a silly cardboard imitation). But he's unable to be serious, caught up in the glamor and ridiculousness of the moment. Scully is caught up in it too, he can tell; she's grinning, giggly, happier than he's seen her in weeks. She offers up a Bureau credit card, courtesy of Skinner, and they walk off of the set hand in hand. It's a vacation. He's more than happy to forget it all, everything hovering over them, in favor of being out on the town for the evening. 

(He forgets, sometimes, that he is really dying. It's hard to remember, seeing as how it isn't something he particularly wants to think about. But when Scully was dying, it was inescapable. He couldn't stop looking at her and thinking about the future, about their fleeting time together, about the things he wanted to tell her but didn't know how to say. He thinks it must be the same for her.)

Later, Scully won't stop touching him. She's giggly and tipsy and can't keep her hands off of him. They're still dressed up, tuxedo and black dress, lying face to face on his bed. He sheds his jacket, drapes it over her, and she presses her hand over his heart. He covers her hand with his knee, and she kisses the tip of his nose, bumps her forehead against his. She kisses him on the mouth like she's trying to prove a point. “Want to play a game of cards?” she whispers, nose to nose. Her breath smells like champagne. He nods helplessly.

They play poker on the bedspread, cross-legged with their knees touching, their hands brushing together as they deal the cards. She wins sixty-nine cents off of him, smirking with satisfaction the entire time. “Cheater,” he says, sticking his tongue out at her. 

She sticks her tongue out in return, like they're teenagers instead of two grown FBI agents. “Tell you what, Mulder,” she says, tapping her fingernails on the deck of cards. “If you win this hand, you're right.”

He raises his eyebrows. “I'm  _ right _ ?”

“Mm-hmm.” She grins playfully. “About everything. And I will never, ever criticize your theories again.”

“Hmm.” He kisses the side of her face, nudging her headband forward with his thumb. “I think you're drunk, Scully.”

“I am not.”

“You are.” The headband falls forward around the crook of his thumb, and her hair falls with it, curtaining around her face. “And so am I,” he says. He kisses her fiercely, her mouth falling open under his. 

Scully pulls back a moment later, her fingers brushing over his cheek. “You don't want me to tell you you're right?” she says, almost disappointed.

He shakes his head. “Not even if I am.”

“Mm. You're never right,” she says.sweetly, folding her arms around his neck. “Or… hardly ever.”

“There you are.” He kisses her again, lengthier. She's warm in his arms, pressed close, her hair tangled in his fingers. 

She moves away again, but not too far, moving her forehead to rest against his chest. “Scully?” he mumbles, lowering his head to try and look her in the eye, but her face is hidden. He thinks he hears a sniffling sound. 

“I'm okay,” she says finally, thickly. 

He lets his eyes shut closed, rests his chin against the top of her head. He doesn't want to ruin the moment. “Okay,” he says softly.

She burrows closer, his suit jacket crinkling around her shoulders. He kisses the part in her hair. 

\---

The headaches don't stop. They get worse. 

They increase from a couple times a week to a couple times every few days. He tries his best to hide them, but Scully constantly being around makes it harder. Her eyes fill with worry every time it happens. It comes at random times, on the morning drive to work or in the office or at dinner. At one point, he wakes up in the middle of the night and fumbles for the pain meds on his bedside table. The clattering wakes Scully up; she sits straight up in bed, shoving at the blankets, and puts her hand on his forehead like she's looking for a fever. Her palm is cool and relieving of the pain. “I'm okay,” he whispers, and she says nothing, but she wraps her arms around him as they settle back in. 

Scully wants him to stay out of the field, but he insists that he's fine to work. And aside from the headaches, he is. They have argument after argument about whether or not he really is fine, to the point of ridiculousness. They've switched positions in the strangest way, back into their roles from three years ago, except he is sick and she is well. Eventually, she gives in and they go to Nebraska to look for werewolves. It's late August, even hotter than usual; Scully's hair, longer than it was earlier in the year, is plastered to her neck and Mulder feels like he is melting, can't get cool. The pool at their hotel is empty, the concrete practically begging for water. He and Scully sit outside after dark their first night in Nebraska, on the concrete steps of the waterless pool, shoulder to shoulder with her hand in his. 

Their second night in Nebraska, he's worn out after a day of chasing dog-like creatures through the woods. Hot and sweaty and almost sick to his stomach. Scully opts for the first shower, just as tired and gross and irritable as he is. Mulder peels off his shirt and collapses on the bed with the pounding of the shower spray through the wall. He's the type of hot that makes him feel nauseous, the kind that makes him want to shed his skin; he can't get cool, even with the air conditioner turned down to arctic-type temperatures. Mulder lifts his head, wiping sweat-soaked hair off of his forehead, and with the movement, a sudden burst of pain shoots through his skull. Hot and white and painful to the point of his nausea increasing, his stomach twisting, and suddenly he's running for the bathroom and retching violently over the toilet. He gasps for breath when it's over, the taste of copper and bile burning in his throat. 

“Mulder?” And suddenly Scully's kneeling beside him, wrapped in a towel, her wet hand on his forehead. Her eyes are wide and worried. “Are you okay?” she says softly. 

He nods, sitting back away from the toilet. “Okay,” he bites out, wiping his mouth. The nausea has subsided but the ache is still there, thudding against his skull. “Headache. Too hot. I'm okay now.”

Scully sits on the floor beside him, her hand touching his forehead, the side of his face. “Should I call a doctor?” she asks, so quiet it's almost painful. 

He shakes his head, gritting his teeth to keep from retching again. “No, I just need something for the headache. I'm okay.”

But he's not, not really. He vomits two more times that night, once after trying to eat some dinner and once again after he takes the medication. He could try and blame it on getting overheated and maybe that's even the case, but Scully isn't ready to believe it's anything else. She goes outside on the breezeway to call Isabel and Mulder can hear her voice, high and upset, through the wall. 

When she comes back into the room, he rolls over on his side to look at her. Her face is unreadable, her hand clenched around the phone. “Mulder, I think we should go home tomorrow,” she says softly, setting the phone on the counter. 

He props himself up on one elbow to look at her. “I think we should wait and see how bad it is tomorrow,” he replies, calmer than he feels. “The case isn't over yet. I could be fine again tomorrow morning.”

She actually doesn't argue. He'd fully expected her to, but she doesn't. She mumbles, “Okay,” and goes into the bathroom. The door shuts hard behind her.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that something's wrong. Mulder gets to his feet and follows her, pushing open the bathroom door gently after knocking to no answer.

Scully's hunched over the sink, her hair held up away from her neck in her fist. She seems to be trying to see the back of her neck. “Scully?” asks Mulder tentatively. “Are you okay?’

She turns away from the mirror, her face uncertain as she lets her hair fall back down. “Mulder,” she says carefully. “What about my chip?”

Cold horror curdles in the pit of his stomach as he realizes: she was trying to see the scar at the nape of her neck. “What about your chip?” he says quietly, terrified.

Her hands tangle in front of her, her fingers fidgeting. “Maybe it could… save you,” she says quietly. “If we could figure out a way to duplicate it… or if it could be removed…”

He's already shaking his head. “Scully, no. Absolutely not.”

“It's worth a try,” she says, defensively. “If it could save you, Mulder, anything is worth a…”

“Absolutely not,” he repeats slowly, maybe a little harsh, because this was not supposed to happen, not to him but definitely not to her, and he won't let her do this. “No. Nothing is worth your life, Scully. Nothing.”

“We don't  _ know  _ that it would be my life,” Scully snaps. “I could take it out and be fine! And what about your life, Mulder? What about you? Am I just supposed to sit by and let this happen to you?”

“Yes, if the other option you're considering involves endangering yourself!” Mulder snaps back. “I'm not going to do that, Scully. I think it's pretty clear after seven years that I can't live without you.”

“And what about me, Mulder? What about me? Do you think it'd be any easier for me if something happened to  _ you _ ? Is that what you think? Or are you the only one allowed to be self-sacrificing, the fucking martyr?” Her face is red and furious, her fists clenched by her side. 

“That's not fair,” he says quietly. 

“It's plenty fair.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “You were certainly willing to throw yourself under the bus when it was me. And now it's my turn.”

“This is completely different, Scully, you have a family who needs you! Who have I got to live for?”

“Me,” says Scully sharply, furiously. “You've got me. And that's not nothing, Mulder.”

He blinks hard to keep from either shouting or crying; it's not unlike the things he has been telling himself since his diagnosis three months ago. “What does it matter if you're gone?” he hisses. “You're talking about  _ sacrificing _ yourself for me.”

“I am  _ talking  _ about giving you a chance to live. And who… who's to say we can't find another chip?”

“Who's to say we can?”

Something flickers over Scully's face and she turns away, her head lowered so he can't read her expression in the mirror. “I never wanted you to know what this was like,” she chokes out. “To know what it's like to die, to know that it's coming. And I never knew… I never understood how horrible it was for you, when it was me, until…”

A lump rises in his throat and he steps closer, reaching out to touch her shoulder. “I know,” he whispers. “I'm sorry.”

She steps back into him and he engulfs her in his arms, hugging her hard. It wasn't supposed to happen this way. He doesn't want to be dying, he doesn't want to die. He holds onto her and swallows back tears. 

“I can't lose you, Scully,” he murmurs, and she intakes a sharp breath, covering his hands with hers on her stomach. “I can't. I won't let you risk it, not for me.”

He can't see her face so he looks at her reflection in the mirror; she looks like she is inches away from tears. “And I can't lose you, either,” she says. “I don't know what to do, Mulder… I feel so fucking helpless. I don't want to just sit by and watch this happen to you.”

“We don't know that you're helpless. We don't. My scans didn't show signs of deterioration; the medicine could be helping.”

“The scans didn't show signs of improvement, either,” she says, a little bitterly. 

He hugs her tighter, arms encasing her ribs. “Scully, I think the best way to fix this is with science,” he says. “Your science. I think you're the only person who can save me.”

She sniffles, turns around to hug him back. They hold onto each other in the bathroom for a long time.

\---

They go back home in the morning, even though he's feeling better. The violent symptoms don't show up again in the week and a half between their return and his next appointment. Scully clears him to work in the field, although a bit begrudgingly. The first case offered up to him (strange acts of violence in Kansas City), he has to decline in favor of the next appointment. (He doesn't dare cancel.)

His scans show signs of decline. Scully looks like she's going to throw up when Isabel breaks the news, and Mulder himself isn't far off. 

Isabel has a new treatment idea she'd like to try. It would require him to come in every two weeks and try some experimental thing. No known risks. No guarantee it'll work, but no guarantees that it won't.

Scully has a hand pressed against her mouth, her eyes red with incoming tears. Mulder swallows back his fear and nods.

In the car, he says quietly, “I want to keep working for as long as I can.” He wants to keep things normal, and the X-Files are one of the things he's clung tightly to, refused to let go. Scully is the other, and dumb as it sounds, he wants to keep working with her. He wants things to be normal.

Scully, not looking at him but staring waterily through the windshield instead, nods. She says nothing. Mulder blinks hard and starts the car.


	2. Chapter 2

In the weeks following the incident in the hotel room in Nebraska, the appointment where Mulder goes onto the treatment plan, he and Scully avoid the topic of his illness. It's not hard; they're experts at avoiding hard topics. And it's gotten to where it's too painful to talk about. But Scully continues to stay in his apartment and Mulder continues to take it easy. Some sort of unspoken promises. They're trying not to hurt each other.

He goes in dutifully for his treatments every two weeks. His symptoms are at somewhat of a limbo; some times are worse than others, but there comes a week in September where, by the end, he's experienced no headaches or nausea or dizziness. He feels perfectly fine, although he doesn't exactly expect it to last. Scully seems relieved; the strange tension that originated not from anger or an argument but simply from the stress of the situation has started to fall away. She seems relaxed, even happy at times.

Jay Gilmore contacts Mulder at the end of the week, looking for answers about the apparent disappearance of his mouth. An unusual X-File that doesn't sound too risky: no crime or murderer or kidnapper, only strange occurrences to chase.

Scully doesn't seem very in favor of taking the case—whether it's because of his condition or the fact that technically, no crime has been committed, he isn't sure (although he suspects a mixture of both). But he manages to convince her to take it. They fly out to Missouri the next morning. 

The recurring factor seems to be a dark-haired woman—first appearing in the trailer of Anson Stokes (the supposed perpetrator of the missing mouth), and then in a picture they find in the storage locker where Gilmore lost his mouth. The photo is unmistakably at least twenty years old, but the woman looks completely unaged. A theory starts to build inside Mulder's mind. 

An invisible body shows up, an apparent invisible Anson Stokes who has been struck by a truck, and Scully is absolutely delighted, absolutely amazed by it. Mulder can't deny that he feels the same way. It's proof positive of the paranormal, right in front of them, and Scully can't even deny it. And on top of that, it more or less confirms his theory that the woman is a jinniyah. Leslie Stokes, Anson’s brother, more or less confirms his theory, and although the container he gives Mulder has no attachment to the genie, he finds pictures of the woman in various areas of history. In a video of Richard Nixon and a photo of Mussolini. Scully seems skeptical, but she's so focused on the invisible body that she doesn't even argue with him very much. She can't stop talking about it, even when they get back to the hotel that night. Mulder indulges her happily, mostly because it's not every day that Scully is so gung-ho about something seemingly impossible, but also because it's been so long since he's seen her this happy.

In the morning, to Scully's extraordinary embarrassment, it's gone. 

Scully is mortified, already denying that it ever happened. Mulder tries to offer some minimal comfort by telling her that the body definitely existed, and likely disappeared due to Leslie taking control of the genie. That doesn't seem to comfort her. He manages to convince her to go and talk to Leslie, but as soon as they arrive, the trailer explodes in a fiery ball that sends them both crashing to the ground. 

They find the woman, the jinniyah, rolled up inside a rug. Perfectly fine. 

In interviewing the genie—Jenn—she reveals her history, how she was once a mortal who wished for long life and great power and was trapped as a genie. And since Mulder was the one to unroll the rug, he is technically owed three wishes. 

Some strange sort of excitement arises in Mulder's stomach, excitement and wonder and nervous anticipation (maybe this is his chance, maybe this is how he avoids death). But Scully looks astonished; unbelieving even. (And maybe a bit of mild jealousy underneath.) Like she doesn't know how the hell to take it. And contemplating it all, Mulder can't blame her. 

\---

Jenn ends up flying back to DC with them, because what the hell else is she supposed to do? She can't leave, according to the rules she explains. Scully seems to think that's a load of horseshit. They're all quiet during the flight, mostly because it's sort of an uncomfortable situation, and when they get back to Virginia, she says she's going to go back to her apartment for a couple of days. “It's probably a mess,” she says awkwardly. “And I need to… get some things.” Mulder doesn't argue, if only because he doesn't want to keep her from her home and because he can understand why she'd want to get out of this situation. 

He takes Jenn home from a lack of anything else to do. “Uh, make yourself at home, I guess,” he says awkwardly as he unlocks the door. Jenn steps inside, her face suggesting she is unimpressed. She surveys the apartment, crossing the living room to examine the fish tank as Mulder sheds his jacket and tosses his keys on the counter. 

“So your partner left the airport rather quickly,” she says, kneeling to look at the fish. “And I don't think she likes me very much.”

“Oh, I don't think she knows what to make of you,” he says, watching her with his arms crossed over his chest. “I don't think I do either, really.” He makes a mental note to call Scully later. 

“Well, you could always give up your three wishes,” says Jenn, moving on to fiddling with stuff on his desk. “I'll disappear, no hard feelings.”

He shifts back and forth awkwardly in lieu of an answer. This feels weird, keeping someone around and expecting them to grant your wishes, but what is he supposed to do? A part of him doesn't want to let this opportunity go. Jenn smirks knowingly at him. “I didn't think so.” She looks back down at the paper she's got in her hands, offers casually, “So what's your first wish?”

Mulder hesitates slightly. A part of him feels awkward, asking for something for him right off the bat. If she's granted the wishes of people like Mussolini and Nixon, then what must she think of him? “Well…” he starts, chuckling a little. “What would your wish be if you were in my place?”

She shakes her head, says, “I'm not you. It doesn't matter.”

“No, but, I just... you know, I'd like to know.”

Jenn hesitates for a moment before  beginning. “I'd… wish that I'd never heard the word "wish" before. I'd wish that I could live my life moment by moment... enjoying it for what it is instead of... instead of worrying about what it isn't. I'd... sit down somewhere with a great cup of coffee and I'd watch the world go by.” She pauses, looking at him, and he nods a little bit in understanding. “But then again, I'm not you,” she adds, a little bitterly. “So I doubt that's your wish.”

“You know, I think I'm beginning to see the problem here,” he says. “You say that most people make the wrong wishes, right?”

“Without fail. It's like giving a chimpanzee a revolver.”

“This is because they make their wishes solely for personal gain.”

“Could be,” she says offhandedly.

“So the trick would be to make a wish that's totally altruistic, that's for everyone,” he says, too confident and a little excited. One wish for him, two wishes for the greater good. Why not? Jenn is staring at him, but he keeps going, his mind going to the best thing he could possibly think of. “So, um… I wish for peace on Earth.”

She smacks her lips contemplatively. “Peace on Earth. That's it?”

“What the hell’s wrong with that?” he asks, not understanding the aversion. “You can't do it?”

“No,” she says. “I can.” She pauses briefly before adding, “It's done.”

Mulder grins with satisfaction before he realizes: silence. He can't hear anything anymore, no traffic from outside. Nothing but the buzz of electricity and the burbling of his fish tank. He looks back at Jenn, who raises her eyebrows. “Oh, crap,” he says, realizing. He goes to the window and pulls down the blinds. Nothing. Cars stopped in the middle of the street with no one driving, no one walking along, none of it. He turns and barrels out of the apartment, looking for any signs of life. 

The hallways, the other streets he runs through, all are just as empty. Everyone has vanished; it's like a ghost town. “I guess I should have seen this coming!” he shouts, because Jenn can probably hear him, she's fucking magic and there's nothing else to drown him out. He should have just wished for the brain disease to go away, first thing. It may be selfish but it's not just for him, Scully wants him to live as much as he… 

“Scully,” he mutters, realizing. If everyone else in the world is gone, than she must be gone, too. 

\---

Jenn catches up with him at the FBI building, and he wishes for the reverse of his wish, embarrasses himself in front of his boss. He retreats to his office to contemplate; what the hell is he supposed to do now? The problem is specificity, and he's already wasted two wishes. He could always just try making a third, more specific wish that benefits all of mankind, but what about his brain disease? He'd planned to have a wish set aside for that, and by this point, it would just be ridiculous not to use it. Selfish not to, even; after everything Scully's been through, he can't put her through his death as well. But then again. Leslie and Anson Stokes made wishes for themselves, and the owner of the storage locker, and Nixon, and Mussolini… 

“Having some trouble?” Jenn says, leaning over his shoulder. 

He looks up at her with some irritation. (Then again, if he wishes to be cured, how does he know all sorts of bullshit stuff won't happen?) “Just trying to figure out how to do this in a way that won't end in disaster,” he says. “In the end of the world, or-or in everyone's eyes growing on stalks.”

“Oh, geez,” Jenn says dryly. “And I was so looking forward to that.” She stalks across the office, arms crossed over her chest. “You know, I kind of thought your last wish would be obvious.”

Mulder swivels in his chair, turning to face her. “And what the hell does that mean?”

The door opens and he turns back around in time to see Scully enter. Her eyes slide over the room, from him to where Jenn is walking towards the glass partition, and she licks her lips, coming to a stop in the middle of the room. “Skinner called me, Mulder,” she says. “Is everything all right?”

“You don't remember disappearing off the face of the earth for about an hour this morning?” he asks. 

“No,” she says, her tone as skeptical as he would've expected.

“Well, I guess everything's okay.”

Scully sighs, starts, “Mul…” before trailing off. She turns, irritably, towards Jenn and asks, “Could you give us a minute, please?”

“Sure,” Jenn says cheerfully, but makes no move to leave. 

Scully turns away, annoyed, and steps closer to his desk before snapping, “Like  _ today _ ?” and turning to find she's disappeared again. Mulder watches as she goes to investigate, finding nothing. “Where the hell did she go?”

“Boink,” he responds.

“No… It's got to be hypnotism or mesmerism or… something,” she says. 

“Scully, it is what is is. You examined an invisible body, remember?”

“I  _ thought _ I did!” she protests sadly. 

“Oh,” he groans lengthily. 

“Mulder, all right, say… say that you're right. Say this is what it is. Then-then what you're doing is extraordinarily dangerous. I mean, you even said that yourself.”

“No, the trick is to be specific,” he explains. “To make the wish perfect.” Although whether or not that's curing himself, he doesn't know. What if something worse happens? He goes with his world peace idea as an example, adding, “That way, everyone is going to benefit. It's going to be a safer world, a happier world. There's going to be food for everyone, freedom for everyone, the end of the tyranny of the powerful over the weak.” She looks sad, sad enough that he wonders if he made the wrong choice. If she doesn't believe, then why does she care what he spends his wish on? “A-Am I leaving anything out?” he tries.

“It sounds wonderful,” she says quietly. Wistfully.

“Then what's the problem?” he asks, his voice going soft at the end.  _ If you want me to ask for my health, Scully, than tell me.  _

“Maybe it's the whole point of our lives here, Mulder—to achieve that. Maybe it's a process that one man shouldn't try and circumvent with a single wish.”

He doesn't reply because he doesn't know what to say. He sighs a little because now he really doesn't know what to do. If world peace is selfish and curing himself is selfish, than what is left? Or maybe curing himself isn't selfish. Maybe curing himself is what Scully wants. But then again, she doesn't believe in genies. So where does that leave him?

Scully shrugs a little, turns and leaves. He doesn't follow. His mind is racing; he looks down at his desk, chewing at his lower lip. The trick is to be specific and not make a wish for yourself. But also not to make a wish too monumental for any one person or genie. So what can he… 

“You ready?” He turns to see that Jenn has appeared behind him. 

He decides in a split second. “Yeah, I'm ready,” he says, turning in his chair. Jenn is watching him expectantly; he takes a deep breath before saying, “I wish that you weren't a genie anymore.”

She blinks in surprise. “What?”

Maybe it's too much like a Disney movie, but he keeps going, maybe stupidly noble, but it's all he can think of. “I wish for your freedom,” he says. “You know. What you said earlier. That's what I want.”

“You've got to be kidding me.” Jenn crosses her arms over her chest. She's much more disapproving than he'd expected. “Still trying to be selfless?”

“This is what you wanted, isn't it?” he protests.

“Well, sure, but what about you? You're the one who's dying.” She raises her eyebrows in an incredulous matter. “God, you're dumber than the Stokes brothers. And I didn't think that was possible.”

“How the hell do you know that I'm…” He still has trouble getting the words out, all these months later; he swallows dryly. 

Jenn jabs a thumb at the desk. “Medical records right there. So. Are you still trying to show off? Or do you really not want to live?” Mulder doesn't answer, his chest tight; Jenn shakes her head and adds, “I guess you are showing off. But it's not impressing anyone. I'd figure you'd at least want to live for that jealous partner of yours.”

“I said I wasn't going to make a wish for me,” he says determinedly, even if the guilt is building in his throat like bile.  _ Don't fucking make me think about Scully right now.  _ “And I meant it. I want to free you. You've been held captive for long enough. And I'd… be afraid of what would happen to me or Scully if I wasn't… specific enough.”

Jenn fidgets, seemingly contemplating. “What if we made a deal?” she offers. “Some way to do both?”

Now it's Mulder's turn to blink in surprise. “What?”

“If this is what you want, then we could figure out a way,” she says. “You'd just have to be… specific. And then you live and I live free and you don't leave your girlfriend alone.”

“She's my partner,” says Mulder automatically.

“She's your girlfriend.” Jenn raises her eyebrows. “So. What do you say?”

\---

He calls Scully when he gets home and asks if she wants to come back. “We could… watch a movie,” he says in a not-at-all suggestive tone. (Well. Not completely.)

“What about your… friend?” Scully replies in a tone that could not be called warm by any definition. 

“She's gone.” Left willingly in a taxi, waving cheerfully as she went. 

“Oh.” Scully's tone warms a few degrees. “Be over in an hour.”

They put on  _ Caddyshack  _ and crack open a couple beers on his couch. After companionably clinking their bottles together, Mulder offers gingerly, “I don't know if you noticed, but, um, I never made the world a happier place.”

“Well, I'm fairly happy,” Scully offers, to his surprise, and as loaded of a statement as that is right now, she says it with all the sincerity in the world. “That's something.” She smiles at him, just a little, and he smiles back a little. He's hoping that they can stay that way. 

“So, what was your final wish, anyway?” Scully adds.

He looks away, towards the TV, pressing his lips together in an indicative way as the movie starts. They sit in silence for a few beats before she prods him, gently, “Mulder?”

“We made a deal,” he says, and takes her hand. He doesn't want to elaborate further. He hopes she understands what he means.

Later, when they're falling asleep tangled together on the couch, minimal clothing on them both, he lets himself hope that it might actually have worked.

\---

His headaches return. His headaches return and he has another bout of nausea and vomiting one night on a weekend, spent crouching on the tile with Scully sitting by his side with a cold washcloth and a glass of water. (She cries that night and tries to hide it, and he pretends he doesn't notice to preserve her dignity.) Another night it's nosebleeds, and Scully's face is white as a sheet when she sees him holding the bloody tissues up to his nose. He cries that night, too, because nosebleeds are too much like when Scully was dying and how the hell did they get back here. How the fucking hell did they get here. It wasn't supposed to happen this way; they were supposed to stop getting hurt at some point. His fucking wish to a fucking genie was supposed to fix this all. 

The worst is when he ends up on the floor in the kitchen, having apparently passed out, and he can't remember a thing after he comes to. Scully actually makes him to to the hospital that night, but they only end up waiting in the emergency room for hours to have a doctor tell them that he's as fine as he can be at the moment. There's nothing they can do.

Scully is saving her vacation time so she can stay home with him if an emergency arises, so they go into work despite it all, but they don't take cases. Mulder feels fine half the time and shitty the other half. Scully is tense, stressed to the point of nearly snapping. At one point, he gets a nausea-inducing headache at work (he only throws up once, but still) and Scully ends up running to the toilet in the next stall just as he finishes retching. Mulder quivers on the tile, white-knuckling the toilet bowl when he hears her own vomiting sounds; this is horrifying, seeing Scully in such horrible shape for no reason other than him. He's worried about her. If he has to leave, then he's determined not to take her with him.

He scrapes himself off of the floor and goes to the stall next door, rasping, “Scully?”

She's bent over the toilet, her hair hanging over her face. “I'm okay, Mulder,” she says quietly, reaching up to flush the toilet. “I'm just tired.”

He sits on the floor beside her, wiping his mouth before putting a hand against the small of her back. “You're working yourself too hard,” he says softly. “Scully, I don't want you killing yourself trying to keep me alive.”

“I'm  _ okay _ ,” Scully snaps. She sits up, wiping at her face, and starts to turn around, but her complexion is entirely too pale, white as salt. He wraps his arms around her and she goes willingly, curling in his arms in a too-cramped bathroom stall. 

“I think we should go home,” he says. “You need to rest.”

Scully nods, miserable. He can feel her tears dotting his shirt. He swallows back the bitter taste in his mouth, tries to ignore the throbbing pain in his head. “This is all going to be over soon,” she says into his chest. “The treatment is going to work. It has to. This will all be over soon.”

Mulder nods, but he’s barely heard her. He's thinking about a few weeks ago, Jenn's deal. He wonders. He wonders if he wasn't specific enough. 

Another horrible pain shoots through his skull and he grits his teeth to keep from crying out. He doesn't want to die. 

\---

Nothing happens for two weeks. 

It sounds more dramatic than it is, but his symptoms really do recede, amazingly drawing back after those few hellish weeks of horrible symptoms. Outside of a few headaches that gradually fade in pain intensity, and Mulder's practically used to them by now, anyway. No vomiting, no collapsing, no memory loss. It's not enough to make him hope for improvement, but it's enough to convince Scully to let him back in the field, on the condition that he step back and take a break if he starts feeling poorly. He can't tell if she agrees out of sympathy or because she misses the field, too. But still. Whatever the reason, they investigate an annual disappearance of (probably drunk, says Scully) teenagers in a cornfield every Halloween, simply because it doesn't sound overly strenuous. Being back on a case, on familiar territory with a familiar repertoire between them, makes Mulder feel normal again. They spend the early hours of November 1 eating mini candy bars out of a plastic pumpkin and teasing each other in a way that makes Mulder forget everything. Scully seems more carefree than she has in months, giggly and tipsy off of champagne from the minibar. She falls asleep around four a.m. with her head in his lap. Mulder sits with his back against the headboard, stroking her silk-fine hair as he watches  _ Dracula  _ on the TV. Scully snuffles a little in her sleep and rolls closer, burrowing her face into his stomach. Mulder smiles a little wistfully. He doesn't want to leave her. He will never voluntarily leave her, ever. 

He told her once two years ago, November of 1998, and now he wants to tell her again. He whispers, “I love you, Scully.”

Candy wrappers crinkle under Scully as she rolls closer, still asleep, snoring a little. She doesn't answer, likely because she didn't hear. He strokes her hair again and again, letting his head fall back against the pillows and his eyes slip closed. 

\---

His symptoms continue to recede, his headaches losing quality and losing frequency. A few a day go to a few a week go to a near rarity. He doesn't let himself hope for too much; his symptoms have been irregular anyway. But the tentative happy state that he and Scully have allowed themselves to fall into is almost blissful at this point. He hopes that nothing will break it.

In November, they find themselves under scrutiny by those that are above them. Scheduled for evaluation of their budget and whether or not it's worth the expense. The same shit they've experienced again and again. 

Mulder is fucking infuriated by the entire thing. All They've taken away from them, his mother and his sister and any chance at him being a father and his health, and now this? The files are one of the few things he has left and he won't lose them if he can avoid it. But it's starting to look like he can't, like he really is going to lose everything.

The agent in charge of his evaluation pulls out the report on his sister's death, turns his words around on him, saying that now that he knows what's happened to Samantha, there is no reason to keep looking. He suggests that Mulder should move his work to an office, narrow his search to save expense, despite the fact that they've solved maybe five cases since the goddamn summer. Mulder has to clench his jaw to keep from shouting at him. He wants to punch somebody. He wants to scream.

He goes to the bathroom to cool off and returns to the office to find Scully staring at the poster. “Think I'm in big trouble,” he says. 

She turns to look at him, offering sympathetically, “Oh, Mulder, how many times have they tried to shut us down?”

“Yeah, but I never actually assaulted an auditor before,” he says, crossing the room to her. 

Scully stares at him, a little impressed, asks, “Did you hurt him?”

“I reduced his vision a little bit,” says Mulder, reaching up to rub at his forehead. 

The phone rings, and Mulder reaches over and puts it on speakerphone. It's Billy Miles, a throwback over seven years deep, offering up cryptic stories of alien abduction in Bellefluer. It's happening again, he says, but not to him. And then he hangs up. 

Mulder turns to Scully, raising his eyebrows suggestively. “More alien abductions, Scully.”

She's chewing at her lower lip nervously. “Oh, Mulder, I don't know. As much as I'd like to… waste money with you… I don't want you to overexert yourself.”

“Scully, I'm fine, really,” he says, reaching out to touch her elbow. “It hasn't been that bad lately, has it? I've been doing better. Less symptoms, it's cooled off. And I was fine on that case on Halloween.”

Scully sighs, her eyes shifted reluctantly to the ground. “I don't know how we could possibly justify the expense,” she mumbles. 

He nudges her side encouragingly. “We'd probably turn up nothing,” he says suggestively.

Her eyes shift shyly up from the ground. “Let's go waste some money,” she says quietly. 

Mulder grins, squeezing her elbow. She smiles a little, tentatively, and they move out of the office together. They go the airport without pause, and though Scully seems worried about him, she doesn't say a word. 

\---

Billy Miles is all grown up, a cop who is a lot more welcoming than Officer Miles Sr. They take Mulder and Scully to the site where the deputy disappeared, and then to the deputy's wife's house, where they find Teresa Nemmen (now Hoese), also all grown up and with a baby. Scully holds her baby with a wistful sort of pining on her face that seems to melt away when she's playing with the baby. Mulder feels like his heart is going to split in two; everything they've been through and he'll never be able to give her this. They'd talked about adoption last year after the IVF failed, briefly, but it had been too soon and now it will never happen. Because he's dying and she can't have a baby and they don't get happy endings. He wants to be a father, though, and he wants to be a parent with her. He'd never realized how much until last year, but he does. Losing his entire family seemed to put things into perspective, and he doesn't want to die without the chance to rebuild it all.

Scully is singing goofily to the baby, and Mulder watches, the sadness choking his chest. He wants this for her. He wants this for himself. He doesn't know what to do. 

They go back to the hotel after Teresa Hoese’s house. They've gotten two hotel rooms (as per Scully's rules, even if they don't use them), but Mulder is a little surprised that Scully actually opts to use hers. He guesses Teresa's baby shook her up, too, because her face is white and she's been withdrawn ever since they left. He doesn't argue, because he would guess that Scully probably needs some time to herself anyway, seeing as how she is spending every night at his apartment. He kisses her goodnight on the cheek and goes into his room alone, settles on the bed to look at the photos of Deputy Hoese that Teresa gave him. 

An hour into going through the photos, there is a knock at the door. “Who is it?” he calls, just to make sure—he doesn't really expect it to be Scully after she asked for time to herself. 

But yet. Her answer of, “It's me,” comes through the door. 

Mulder climbs off of the bed and goes to open the door. Scully is on the other side, pale and quivering, just a little bit but enough that he can tell she's feeling poorly. “What's wrong, Scully? You look sick.”

“I don't know what's wrong,” she says. 

“Come in,” he says, drawing her into the room. 

Scully heads straight for the edge of the bed, sitting down, still quivering. Mulder sits across from her, touching the top of her hand with his fingertips. “I, um…” she begins to explain. “I was starting to get ready for bed and I started to feel really dizzy—vertigo or something—and then I just… I started to get chills.”

“You want me to call the doctor?” asks Mulder, already pulling back the sheets and the comforter on the bed. 

“No, I just… I just want to get warm.” She crawls towards the head of the bed, his hand moving over her back, and she pauses long enough for him to take off her shoes before lying down and pulling the covers around her. They shove the blankets away before he lies down behind her, back to her chest, arm around her. “Thank you,” says Scully, something of a sheepish laugh in her tone. 

He tucks his face in closer to her, resting his nose on her shoulder briefly before readjusting and murmuring into her ear, “It's not worth it, Scully.”

She tenses in his arms, briefly; maybe she thinks he's talking about his disease. “What?” she says finally after a few beats of silence. 

Clarifying, he says, “I want you to go home.”

She chuckles briefly (as if to poke light at the fact of him trying to protect her when he's the one who…) “Mulder, I'm gonna be fine,” she says lightly, but the sniff accompanying it at the end shows her cards. 

“No, I've been thinking about it,” he says. “Looking at you tonight, holding that baby… knowing everything that's been taken away from you.” She says nothing, so he continues gently: “A chance for motherhood and your health and that baby. I think that... I don't know, maybe they're right.”

“Who's right?” she asks, still sniffling a little. 

“The FBI,” he says softly. “Maybe what they say is true, though for all the wrong reasons. It's the personal costs that are too high.”

Scully sniffles like she is holding back tears; he can see the struggle not to cry from his vantage point and he can tell what she's thinking of. He keeps going, soothingly in her ear. “There so much more you need to do with your life. There's so much more than this.” And he's telling her these things because he's leaving her, because he doesn't want her to stay and invest her life in a cause that's taken everything away from her, in a cause that just might get her killed someday. She has a life to live, things to do, and he wants to make sure she does them. He has to stop being selfish. He has to let her go as much as she will have to let him go. 

(And maybe Jenn was right and he's going to live, or maybe he wasn't specific enough and he's doomed to die or meet some other horrible fate. He wishes that he, too, had never heard the word  _ wish.  _ He wishes that none of this had ever happened, that he has back everything he's lost. Maybe that's what he should've wished for.)

Scully still hasn't said anything. He strokes her forehead briefly with her fingertips. Whispers, “There has to be an end, Scully,” and kisses her cheek gently before drawing back. He lays his cheek flat against her shoulder. 

Scully sniffles again, grabbing his hand and pulling it to rest her mouth against it. “You're just saying this because you're sick,” she says quietly. “And because you want me to… be okay after you're…” She can't finish. Her fingers tighten around his. 

“Maybe I am,” he says softly. “But Scully, I'd be saying it anyway.” He has to believe that. “You've given too much of your life to this,” he says, and then adds gingerly, “And so have I.”

Scully grips his hand hard. She's still sniffling; he feels a warm drop of water hit his hand and trail down his knuckle. 

He kisses her shoulder gently, sweetly. “There has to be an end,” he says, and he never thought he'd be saying this about himself, but he is. “Or at the very least, a limit. I don't want to waste my life.”  _ Or what I have left of it,  _ he adds silently, maybe bitterly. “And I don't want you wasting yours.”

Scully snuggles into him, still shivering despite the warmth of him and the blankets. “You don't know that it isn't working,” she whispers. “The treatment. Mulder, you don't know that you won't be just fine. You don't know you won't be perfectly well tomorrow.”

She's willing to believe for him, to keep him alive. Tears well into Mulder’s eyes and he presses her face into his shoulder; maybe she's always been willing to believe for him and he never saw it. “I just want to be prepared for the possibilities,” he says, and his voice cracks. And they're both crying, they're holding each other and crying in a bed in Bellefluer, Oregon. Something between them seven years deep, like all things between them. He loves her, he loves her fiercely. 

And then Scully says something so quietly he thinks he might have imagined it. “I love you,” she says, and sniffles. “I want you to know that… no matter what happens, I want you to know that.”

And now Mulder can't hold back his tears. He hides them against her shoulder, kisses her hair, her cheek, and tries not to sob. They're both crying in this bed in Bellefluer, and he regrets every moment they've spent together if only because of where it got her. She could've been happy. And who knows where he would be, but Scully… Scully could have been happy. He holds onto her and they both cry softly until they fall asleep in a tearstained tangle of arms and legs. 

\---

Teresa Hoese is gone in the morning. They go to her house to find her abducted, patches of burned carpet that echo green, sizzling blood to Mulder. He remembers a version of his sister once who bled green, and shudders. He walks outside and finds a kid who claims his friend was abducted. 

The kid takes Mulder and Scully to the site in the woods. He shows Mulder where his friend disappeared and where he dropped the flashlight, and it's only then that Mulder realizes that Scully is gone. 

“Scully?” he calls out. He heads further into the woods, towards the spot where the kid indicated that his friend disappeared. “Scully?” he says again just as he sees her, sprawled out on her back on the ground. “Scully,” he murmurs, going to kneel by her side. She's conscious, looking up at him, but she's clearly exhausted, all the energy drained from her. “You want some water?” he asks, his hand going to touch the side of her neck.

“What happened to her?” the kid asks. 

“Could you just get her some water?” Mulder says, his attention focused on Scully. 

Scully is panting. “I just… I just…” she tries as he pulls her gently up into his arms. “I just hit the ground.” Her head lolls against his chest.

“Here, lie still,” he says, his arms supporting her shoulders. And out of nowhere, a horrible thought occurs to him: what if her getting sick last night wasn't an isolated incident? What if it's too late for her to leave without further consequence?

He can't think about that. The thought of it makes him want to throw up. 

“Why is this happening to me?” Scully whispers, her eyes lolling somewhere between opened and closed. 

“It's okay,” says Mulder. “It's okay.” He reaches up to smooth hair off of her face. 

“What the hell’s going on, Mulder?” she asks breathlessly. 

“I don't know.” His mind is racing at a million miles a minute; he's probably just being paranoid, but he considers something: the fact that everyone who has been taken is an abductee. And Scully is… “But these aren't just random abductions, Scully. We've got to warn Billy Miles of that.” This is the fear, that they aren't random and they're here for a reason and that Scully isn't well but that she's sick or destined to be abducted again… 

“Warm him of what?” Scully asks. Her cheek rocks against his chest again. 

“These abductees aren't just systematically being taken,” he says. He reaches up to stroke hair out of her face again. “They're not coming back.”

This is it, some version of what he feared: Scully is sick, Scully will be taken, he can't save her or himself. He doesn't know what to do for her. He holds her close until she declares herself okay to get up, getting shakily to her feet and balancing herself on a tree until she can stand on her own. “I’m fine, Mulder,” she says when she sees him looking at her, their positions reversed from before he told her he was sick, and all he can think is he wishes he believes her. 

They go to Billy Miles’ house to find him and find nothing. Exactly the type of thing he'd expect by now. 

\---

They go home that night. Scully repeatedly says that she is fine, and all evidence aside from a little dizziness when they land. By all appearances, they both seem fine. But the scene in the woods doesn't leave Mulder's head. First the dizziness and then outright collapsing? He is worried about her. 

Two days later, Skinner shows up in his office with Krycek and Marita. They're claiming that the UFO is in the Oregon woods, hidden. They want Mulder to find it.

In Mulder's mind, there is no question. This is his chance to save the X-Files, to ruin the dying smoker's plans. But there is also no question about whether or not Scully will go. They're taking abductees. He's not going to lose her, not again. If a few months is all he has left, then he is going to spend that time trying to fix things. Trying to make sure she's okay. 

The Gunmen come to the Bureau and show Mulder and Scully where the UFO is, jammed in Skinner's office along with Skinner, Marita, and Krycek. It's certainly one of the more awkward gatherings Mulder has been to; he can tell Scully is less than happy. Scully actually leaves the room at one point, and Mulder follows on her heel out into the hall. “Mulder, if any of this is true…” she says to him. 

“If it is, or if it isn't I want you to forget about it, Scully,” he says firmly. 

She gapes at him in surprise. “Forget about it?”

“You're not going back out there. I'm not going to let you go back out there,” he continues, unyielding.

“What are you talking about?”

“It has to end sometime. That time is now.” He's ready, if only because she has become so much more to him than his partner. And he wants more for her than this. 

“Mulder…” she says tremulously. 

“Scully, you have to understand that they're taking abductees. You're an abductee. I'm not going to risk…” His words stick in his throat; he swallows gingerly before finishing as unsteadily as her, “… losing you.”

Her face is unreadable, a sad sort of unreadable; she steps closer to him slowly, wrapping her arms around his neck. He holds her close, his hands trembling against her back. Her hand is on the back of her neck, her cheek against his neck. “Mulder…” she says softly. “I don't know… how I could let you go out there any more than you could let me. You're… sick.”

He rubs circles on her back gently, not particularly caring who sees. “If you don't want me to go, Scully, I won't,” he says softly, and means it. He'd do about anything for her right now. “I won't. But I haven't had any episodes in weeks and I'm not an abductee. I think I'd be okay.” 

Scully is quiet for a minute, long enough that he thinks she's going to say she doesn't want him to go. But instead she says, “I won't let you go alone.” 

\---

Skinner and Mulder go to the airport the next day. He'd been surprised when Skinner volunteered, but all things considered, he won't complain. Skinner has more experience with this kind of stuff than the Gunmen, and he certainly would pick Skinner over Krycek or Marita. 

Scully is quiet when he says goodbye, subdued enough that he considers staying there with her. But he doesn't have the courage to bring it up, ridiculous as it is. He feels like opting out would scare her, make her think he's feeling poorly, when in actuality he's worried about her. He kisses her at the doorway and she takes his hand, uncurling hers and letting a cool slip of metal fall into his palm. “I want you to take this,” she says quietly. 

Mulder raises his hand to see her cross necklace curled there, and closes his fingers over it instinctively. When he looks up, Scully is looking at the ground as if embarrassed. “It's silly,” she says quietly, “but…”

“It's not silly,” he says in a voice rough with emotion, and kisses her again.

She shivers against him in a way that makes him want to change his mind, but when he pulls away, she leans forward to kiss his cheek briefly and says, “I'll see you when you get back.”

He takes her hand in his and squeezes it. “I'll call you,” he says. 

She nods. He turns, guilt curdling in his stomach, and goes down the hall. “Be safe,” Scully calls sternly after him, and he replies silently,  _ I will.  _

Waiting at the airport with Skinner is quiet and the flight to Oregon is even quieter. Aside from the fact that Mulder can't shake the feeling that Scully should be the one beside him, he can't think of one single thing he'd like to talk about. His mind is too muddled between UFOs and brain diseases and alien abductions.

When they're at baggage claim at the Oregon airport, Mulder's phone begins to ring. He reaches for it immediately, thinking it might be Scully. He answers, “Mulder,” in a half-distracted tone, clutching his bag while he watches Skinner search for his. 

“Mr. Mulder?” Scully's friend's voice is on the other side of the phone. “I tried calling Dana to give her the news, but she didn't pick up. Is this a good time for you?”

Mulder lets his bag drop, turns away from Skinner. “News? What do you mean?” he says, near stammering. His heart is pounding so hard that he can feel it everywhere, his hands sweating. He sees his reflection in the airport window, slightly panicked eyes, slightly hopeful… 

“Mr. Mulder, your most recent scans came back clear,” Isabel says. “As far as we can tell, you're not dying. We'd like you here for a follow-up, but it certainly looks like you're going to be fine.”

Mulder lets out a breath in a huff, wiping his sweaty hands on his pants. He's not dying. Oh fuck, he's not dying. He laughs a little, almost bent in half with relief. “They came back clear? It's okay? I'm not…” 

“It's fine. There's signs of clear improvement instead of decline. Your brain is getting stronger now.”

Mulder wipes his mouth, hands quivering; he's smiling so hard his face hurts. He's not dying. He's going to live. Fuck, he has to tell Scully. “I… thank you. Thank you for… calling. Y-you said you told Scully already?”

“No, I'm afraid she's not answering her phone,” says Isabel. “You're not with her?”

“No, I'm on a case… Thank you, Isabel, I'll follow up with you.” His head is rushing, his fingers cold; he has to tell Scully, he has to call her right away. He should go back to DC, this is face-to-face news, somehow. He hangs up the phone and turns around to see Skinner watching him questioningly, holding the aforementioned suitcase. “Sir, I have to go back to DC,” he says, practically stammering.

“Agent Mulder, what's going on?’ Skinner asks carefully. 

“I've just gotten some… important medical news, and I need to go home.” His finger brushes against Scully's cross from where it rests against his collarbone, and he almost smiles again.

Skinner blinks in surprise, but not in total shock. “Does this have anything to do with your decline in working cases over the past couple months?” he says, a little knowingly. 

“Yeah,” Mulder says, a little impatiently; he suspected Scully might have mentioned something to Skinner even though he asked her not to, but it doesn't matter now. “It is, and I need to get back.” He needs to tell Scully in person and he needs to tell her right away; that's how she told him about her remission, as miraculous as this, and the fact that he didn't tell her for the first few weeks makes it all the more necessary. (He wonders, briefly, why Scully isn't answering her phone, but he chalks it up to busyness.) “I need to go back,” he mutters under his breath. He shouldn't have left in the first place, not with Scully sick; when she refused to let him go alone, it should have been a sign. “Sir, can you…”

Skinner waves his hand impatiently. “Yes, go on, Agent. You might be able to catch a flight back if you go right now.”

Mulder picks up his luggage, gripping it hard and turns and walks away, his mind racing.  _ I'm not dying,  _ he thinks, and catches himself smiling. He lets himself hope that things will be okay.

He gets on a flight back to DC within the hour with a last-minute ticket. He tries Scully a couple of times when he is waiting for the plane, but she doesn't pick up, and then his flight is called and he has to turn his phone off. For the majority of the flight, he remains jittery; he tries to read or to distract himself with an in-flight movie, but nothing works. He just wants to see Scully. None of it seems to matter in his mind: not the X-Files closing, not the UFO, none of it. She's safe, she hasn't been abducted, and he's not dying. After everything she's done for him, he wants to tell her that it worked. That she saved him. 

When he leaves the airport, dragging his bag through the parking lot to find his car, he remembers and turns his phone back on. It beeps alarmingly as a series of missed calls show up, all from the Lone Gunmen. 

Nervousness curdles in the pit of his stomach as he calls back, unlocking his car to drop his bag in. The phone answers, bypassing the tape, and it's Langly's voice saying, “Mulder, is that you?” frantically on the other end. 

“Yeah, Langly, it's me. What the hell is going on?” he asks thinly. 

“Don’t go to the UFO site! You're in danger, Scully found it, the other abductees had strange brain activity the way you did. If you go to the site, they're going to take you!”

“Whoa, Langly, slow down.” His head is spinning; he leans hard against the car. “I'm not at the UFO site. I'm not even in Oregon, I'm back here in DC.” 

Langly sighs with relief on the other end. “Oh, jeez,” he says. “Oh, thank shit. You're back in DC?”

“Yeah, I'm headed back right now. Tell Scully I'm headed back.” He inserts the key, turning it in the lock. 

Langly doesn't say anything for a moment. And then he says, “Dude, you've got to go to the hospital.”

Mulder almost drops the phone. “The hospital?” he repeats numbly. 

Langly's voice is thick with apology. “Scully collapsed at the FBI, right after we figured out that you were in trouble,” he says solemnly. “We took her to the closest hospital, Frohike and Byers stayed with her while I tried to get in touch with you…” 

Nausea rolls briefly through his stomach as he remembers: her nausea in Oregon, the way she collapsed. And all he can think of is Jenn and his wish: he wasn't specific enough, he will survive but Scully… Scully will… “Is she sick?” he stammers. “Is she hurt, Ringo, do you know?”

“They're still checking her out, I think. Just… just go to the hospital, man.”

Mulder hangs up and gets into the car frantically. He speeds out of the airport, hands quivering all the way. He feels like he is going to throw up. This can't be happening. All this time, all the effort she went through to save him and now… he can't lose her. He won't lose her.

The feeling of ease, of excitement gone, he drives to the hospital, the dread hanging over him feeling more natural than anything. 

He can't find Byers and Frohike, but he finds a nurse. The admissions nurse directs him to a private room; he lies and says that he's the husband because goddamnit, he wants to see her and he’s the closest thing to a husband she has. He walks down the hall, shoes clicking on the tile; he reaches up and closes his hand around her cross. When he gets to her room, his breath catches in his throat; she's sitting in the hospital bed wearing a blue gown, covers pulled over her lap. She's looking away from the door, a look of incredible sadness on her face. He takes a deep breath and taps on the door before entering. 

When she looks up at him, a look that can only be described as relief comes over her face. “Mulder,” she says, climbing out of bed. He holds up his hand in an attempt to keep her in bed, drawing closer, but she has her arms tight around him before he can bother. He pulls her against him, arms tight around her, tangled together as he sits down on the side of the bed. Scully has her face buried fully in his neck. “Byers and Frohike… said that they hadn't heard from Langly, that they didn't know if he'd gotten ahold of you, I thought…” she chokes out, her hands clutching at his jacket. “Oh my god, Mulder, I'm so glad you're okay. You're  _ here _ .”

He nods, pressing his lip to the top of her head. “I'm here,” he whispers. “I'm sorry I left.”

Scully sniffles, tugging on his shirt as she pulls away to look at him. Her eyes are red as if she's been crying. “Why… why did you come back?” she asks thickly. “What happened?”

He wants to ask what's happening with her, what's wrong, but he supposes he can give her the good news first. He wants her to know it's okay. “Well, uh…” he says, leaning forward to kiss her forehead. “Scully, I got a call from Isabel.” Her face shifts, her hand clutching his shirt; she's nervous and trying to hide it, excited and trying to hide it. He strokes her hair back gently and says, “Scully, I'm fine. The scans came back showing improvement. They want a follow-up appointment, but they said I'm not dying. I'm going to be fine.”

Her face shifts again, some sort of elated sadness. “Oh my god,” she says, sniffling. Tears are rolling down her face, but she's smiling. “You're okay? You're not dying?”

“No, I'm okay. I'm just fine. You saved me, Scully.” He feels like he himself is on the verge of tears; he's still so scared about what she's going to tell him, if she's the one dying now, but he tries to smile. “If I hadn't told you, if you hadn't brought your friend on…” 

Scully hugs him again, a shaky, relieved, clinging kind of hug. She's almost rocking him, her fingernails digging into his shoulders, her face pressed into the crook of his shoulder. Her shoulders are quivering like she's crying. 

Mulder kisses the side of her face gently. “Scully,” he whispers, his voice shaking. “Scully, I don't want to… ruin this, but… I need to know. Are you sick? Is that why…”

She chokes out what might be a laugh into his shoulder. “Oh, Mulder,” she mumbles. “No, I'm not sick. My MRI came back clear.”

Relief shoots through him in a frantic mess. “Scully,” he gasps out. “Oh my god.”

She laughs again and he laughs, too, and they're rocking back and forth on the bed. She's not dying and he is not dying and neither of them were abducted. They're okay, they're really okay. He kisses her face, her neck, the curve of her shoulder. 

“So, what…” he asks finally, leaning back to look at her. She wipes her eyes, smiling tremulously up at him. “What was wrong, Scully?” he asks gently. “Langly told me that you passed out… and everything in Oregon… what's wrong?”

Scully laughs again, thumbing her cheeks. “You're not going to believe this,  Mulder,” she says, scooting off of his lap and sitting on the edge of the bed to face him. “I'm having a hard time believing it myself. Or explaining it. But, um…” She smiles a little, tucking hair behind her ear and looking at the ground briefly. Mulder waits, trying to be patient, trying not to be nervous. She looks up at him and she looks scared, just a little bit, but she also looks happy, so nervous and happy that he can't believe it. And then she says, “I'm pregnant.” 

He almost can't believe what he's hearing at first. It takes his brain a few minutes to process it. “Y-you’re pregnant?”

She nods, chin trembling a little. She touches the side of his face gently. “It's true. I don't know how, but it is.”

He thought it was impossible. He thought it was impossible, like so many things Scully has said are impossible, but here they are. And he believes because he has to. “I can't believe this…” he says hushedly. “Scully, this is incredible.”

She nods, tears welling in her eyes, smiling hugely through the tears. He gathers her up in his arms, clinging hard to her, tears dripping down his face. Within a day, their entire life is shifted. They aren't dying or abducted, but they are suddenly parents. Suddenly, impossibly; so many impossible things in such a short time. They operate with impossibilities.

“I love you,” he mumbles into her shoulder, and she laughs weepily against his neck, confirms that she feels the same way in a trembly voice. They hold each other on the bed.

Just a year ago, she asked him to be a father with him. Just a year ago, they cried together as they found out it wasn't happening. Just a few months ago, he learned he was dying. And now… 

There has to be an end, he said not three days ago. And now there is, but it's nothing like what they expected. It's not the ending he was anticipating, but he's more than fine with that. He is going to live, and he is going to live for them. 


End file.
